OK we have a smart TV with freeview built in. I'm looking at a device to play DVD (mostly kids DVD) plus a means to record TV. DVD is a simple HDMI plug in device (4 HDMI sockets on the TV). What is best for recording live TV?

The TV has USB sockets too (2 x USB) and a PCMI card slot too (whatever that is for). Is it as simple as sticking in a USB flash drive or an external hard drive used for computer use?

I like the sky setup where you can pause a live TV programme and even record programmes on the other side while watching something else. Is there similar for an antenna based freeview system? If a remote box like sky one (I think humax have the market leading position for this) is used how would it work with the built in freeview tuner?

Anyone with suggestions? I suspect dvd question is easy. The recording probably has a few options from simple memory device plugged into USB sockets to a more complex freeview plus HD box (with issues over having two freeview tuners in series).

Some smart TVs (like my Sony) can directly record to a USB hard drive and pause live TV. The manual will explain if it has this feature. Otherwise get an external recording device with its own Freeview receiver and storage built in. That way also you can record one channel while watching another. See Poly Hive's recent thread on DVD recording for suggestions on Freeview recorders as well as DVD writers.

The modern aternative is streaming via catchup services that your smart TV wll have some of (like BBC iPlayer), but you may get better picture quality (less compression) from your own recordings, as well as being able to keep them for longer/ever. Another option is recording with a PC fitted with a Freeview PCIe card (with single, dual or even quad tuners - recording off the air not the internet, so need an aerial input).

The latest Humax Freeview recorders have all the catchup apps as standard, and built in WiFi if you can’t get an Ethernet cable to them (we use the TP Link plugs to enable us to use Ethernet which we found more reliable than the WiFi).

The recording probably has a few options from simple memory device plugged into USB sockets to a more complex freeview plus HD box (with issues over having two freeview tuners in series).

Not sure what you think the issues will be here, if you get a Humax or similar they mostly come with 2 (or more) inbuilt tuners so that you can record more than 1 channel at once. It's not going to affect the tuner in the tv (heck, you could be recording several things while watching something else entirely on the tv tuner, if you really wanted).

I think the latest Humax has three tuners so you can record 3 and watch one other. But if you have a Humax or similar it connects to the TV via HDMI and usually you use the Humax for both recording (2 or 3 programmes) whilst watching another. The TV becomes a monitor in effect. In rare cases you may have to switch the TV source from the Humax input to TV tuner to watch a programme whilst others record, but we have a twin tuner Humax (last generation) and it only happens about twice a year tho we don’t tend to watch live tv much at all, mostly recordings. Even the “Strictly” final we recorded and started watching maybe 40 minutes after the start, so we could skip through the boring bits but still finish the programme “on time”